Intimate Betrayal (33 page)

Fletcher waited in the small room behind the high altar, which was being finished as the sacristy. In it would be kept the
sacred objects for the communion service—the chalice and the plate, the candlesticks for the altar, the minister’s vestments.
At the moment, the dark room was filled with construction gear and debris.

He was wired. She was coming. He was finally going to get his chance with her. And this time he wasn’t going to blow it.

He hadn’t found Vico yet, but he had taken some precautions in that regard.

The kid was hiding somewhere in the foundation, and he’d been thinking about that. He’d been considering the ways into the
crawl spaces and the possible ways out.

Except that everybody knew that once you went down into the earth, into the underworld, you didn’t come out again.
The kid liked it in there, did he? Fine, because that’s where he was going to stay.

Meanwhile, everything else was prepared. He had found several tall, thick candles and arranged them on the floor around the
high altar. They bathed the area in soft yellow light. It was romantic. He hoped she would see it that way. What more romantic
place could there be than the peaceful sanctuary of a church at midnight?

Fletcher hoped that Annie wouldn’t resist him too much. Fear was fine. He wanted her to be afraid. But he also wanted her
submission. He was hoping that the atmosphere of the place would overwhelm her and she would know that everything in her life
had been working up to this moment. Surely she would recognize that.

But if she didn’t, he was prepared. There would be no backing down, no going back. He had a duffle bag filled with supplies,
including an automatic pistol he’d bought from a mail order house down South, chloroform in case she resisted (procured from
a medical supply house), his Desert Commando knife, and several lengths of strong nylon climbing rope. The smooth marble altar,
already completed, would make a creamy, lovely bed. Far, far better than the little one in the basement of the youth center.

He imagined Annie bound here, stretched out on her back on the altar, naked and writhing in the soft candlelight. What a magnificent
sight it would be! What a luscious feast for his eyes. What a perfect sacrifice.

She was coming, and for the first time in a long time, Fletcher felt joy radiating through him.

Maybe he should kneel and give thanks.

* * *

“There’s a patrol car cruising up the street. You’ll have to have to wait in the car.”

“Dammit, Annie.”

“I’ll try to avoid them, obviously, but I’ve got a legal right to be on the premises. If they really are looking for you,
though, they could arrest you.”

“After last time, they’re damn well not going to arrest me without a helluva lot more evidence than they have so far. It’s
Sam’s word against mine, and we’ve just about got him nailed.”

“Yes, but until we do have him nailed, I think you should be extra cautious.”

“I
am
being extra cautious, for crissake. Look at me.”

Annie smiled. He was crouched down below the car window. This was difficult, for Matt was tall. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, Annie.” They both took a moment to register the fact that this was the first time they’d spoken those words—here,
in a car, while trying to elude the San Francisco police.

Annie managed to squeeze into a parking spot on the far side of the youth center. After taking a careful look around, she
said, “Okay, the cop car is gone. If you’re coming, come now.”

They got out of the car and ran into the shadows of the construction site. Annie led Matthew toward the south transept door.

* * *

When Fletcher saw Annie slip in through the south entrance, his heart lifted even higher. By the light of the candles he’d
placed all over the front of the cathedral, she looked beautiful. She was dressed simply, in blue jeans and a cream-colored
blouse, with her golden hair pulled back from her face and knotted at the nape of her neck. The severe hairstyle made her
look virginal, untouchable. But she was here for him.

And then, right behind her, a man entered. Worse, he stepped forward rapidly and put his hand on Annie’s shoulder to stop
her progress into the church. Sounds carried in the cavernous building, and Fletcher heard his sharp whisper: “What the hell
are all these candles lit for? Wait a sec. I don’t like the look of this.”

Annie stood still, and the man’s arm came around her from behind, his hand passing over a breast, lingering caressing it.

Fletcher felt a hammer crash down inside his head. He recognized the man, both from photographs and from his visit here a
couple of weeks ago. Matthew Carlyle. Annie already had a man. She had a fucking billionaire.

He ducked back behind the altar. Anger hardened like a knot inside his belly. He fished inside his duffle for the Desert Commando
knife, but instead his hand found the automatic. He grew instantly more peaceful when he felt the cool walnut stock slide
into his palm.

Another man? No. That was not allowed.

Annie and The Other Man advanced into the building, moving slowly along the south transept aisle. They stopped for a moment
beside the stone baptismal font that had just been installed to the right of the sanctuary railing. There were now two baptismal
fonts in the building, one in the front and the other in the rear.

They moved toward the spot where the transept aisle intersected the main aisle—the apex of the cathedral’s huge longitudinal
cross. They had to step around the scaffolding from which Giuseppe had fallen. Annie looked up at it and seemed to shiver.

She called out softly, “Jack?”

Fletcher slithered over the floor behind the altar and down the steps into the ambulatory. Crouching in the darkness, he moved
rapidly in a semicircle to the left, around the high altar area to the steps of the pulpit, which curved up to the elevated
pulpit behind a solid stone balustrade. He could hear them whispering just beyond him, their feet clicking on the marble-inlaid
floor as they walked.

“He might be down in the basement somewhere, searching for Vico,” Annie said to The Other Man.

“If Vico has hidden here successfully for this long, I’m not sure why any of us think we can find him,” said Carlyle.

Fletcher hated his voice. So deep, so—so rich. So guilty. He was a killer. He deserved to die. Deserved to have his throat
slashed and his blood poured out onto the sacred marble, like a pagan sacrifice.

Fletcher glanced down at the gun in his hand. Bad choice. Next time he would select the knife.

“Jack!” Annie called out, right beneath the pulpit, and Fletcher jumped. She sounded loud and insistent. She sounded impatient.
She sounded like all the women whose voices had been giving orders, making demands. Starting with his mother, that loudmouthed
bitch.

They were right beneath him now, rounding the corner overlooked by the pulpit, about to enter the ambulatory….

He reared up, the gun held backward in his raised hand. Firing it, much though he would like to, would be foolhardy. There
were probably cops on patrol nearby.

As Annie and her lover started, looked up, cried out, Fletcher brought his arm down hard. He felt the blow through to his
shoulder as the butt of the gun connected with the top of Carlyle’s skull, and watched him slump to the floor.

Hadn’t the man’s wife died after being struck in the head?
Let justice be done,
Fletcher thought, with sudden, shining clarity.

Annie threw herself to the floor with Matt, trying to rouse him, seeking a pulse, breathing, anything. His eyes were shut
and his face had gone blank, and that blankness terrified her, because it reminded her of Charlie’s face on that awful last
day in the hospital.
Don’t let it happen again, please don’t let it happen again, please, I love this man, please, please
…

Hands grabbed her and tried to pull her to her feet. She fought them, sobbing.
No please, no please, no please!

She didn’t care what happened to her. He had a gun; she’d seen its cold dark metal. She didn’t care, if Matt was no longer
breathing….

She jerked away from the invasive hands, and her head fell back upon her lover’s chest. And there, wonder of wonders, she
heard the slow, steady beat of his heart.

He was alive! Unconscious, but still alive. But he needed a doctor. He needed—

This time the hands were successful. She was pulled away from Matt, dragged at least a meter across the floor, then flipped
over onto her belly. She felt strong knees and thighs straddling her, rippling with tense muscles. She felt a hand
in her hair, tearing out the pins and loosening it until it spilled out over her shoulders.

“Why did you bring him?” a voice muttered. “You were supposed to come alone. You were supposed to come to
me.
I was waiting for you, Annie. I was prepared. Everything was ready. I’ve been waiting for you for so damn long.”

She knew it was Jack Fletcher, and she knew he was crazy. It was no surprise, really. But she’d never guessed he was
this
crazy.

Nothing was as it seemed. Fletcher had seemed a little eerie, but competent and capable of functioning normally in society.
And as. for Sam—

Get your wits together, Annie!

She had to handle this. There had to be a way to handle this.

“Jack, I came here tonight because you told me you’d found Vico.” She spoke slowly and clearly, trying to reach him. “We want
to talk to Vico because we think he can confirm the identity of Giuseppe’s killer.”

Fletcher spat toward Matt’s still body. “There’s your killer.”

“No. The killer is Sam.”

Fletcher laughed, but Annie was heartened to see that he was at least listening to her. He must still be capable of some vestige
of reason.

“Sam couldn’t kill a bug that was crawling on the carpet.”

“Sam’s got you fooled just as he’s fooled everybody else. We have proof. Sam changed the blueprints for the cathedral after
they were approved by the city inspectors. He sent the altered version to the contractors. And to you. All these months, you’ve
been supervising the construction of an unsafe
cathedral. Sam hired you because he knew you could be fooled. He hired me for the same reason—I had so little construction
experience that he figured I wouldn’t ask the right questions. And he was right. I didn’t.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Fletcher said, dragging her to her feet. God, he was strong. He pulled
her up as if she were made of silk and feathers instead of flesh and bone. She heard him grunt with satisfaction when he felt
her legs respond.

He wasn’t listening, but she had to try. She had to try
something.

“Matt and I were just in Sam’s office. We searched his computer until we found the altered CAD file. Sam had tried to hide
it electronically, but it was there. Jack, do you hear me—
we have proof.
Sam was in collusion with someone from the construction company—probably Paul McEnerney himself. They charged the high costs
of the first cathedral, built the lesser one for several million dollars less, and pocketed the difference.

“And who do you think they’re going to blame it on? You, Jack. You and me. We’re the scapegoats, Jack.”

“I don’t believe you. Sam Brody is a stand-up guy. You’re trying to confuse me. That’s what women do—they lie and lie and
confuse all the men.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Jack. We have proof. We have the two different versions of the CAD file and the blueprints.”

“Women of lies,” he muttered. “Women of cries.” He gave a little smile, as if impressed with his cleverness, and added, “Women
complies or else woman dies.”

He dragged her up the marble side steps toward the altar.
She saw the candles on the floor and the ceremonial altar all polished and bare. And she saw the ropes.

“At last,” he was murmuring. “At last, at last…”

He pushed her toward the altar, and she felt sick. She remembered all the moments when she’d turned toward him in the cathedral
and seen his hot eyes on her. Had he been fantasizing about this all that time?

She could feel his hands on her breasts now, through her silk blouse. He was rough, squeezing one of her nipples until she
gasped. She struggled to free herself, and as she squirmed she felt his erection pressing into her from the rear.

He liked her fear, she realized. He liked her struggles. He was a sadist and probably a killer as well.

Annie craned her neck to look back at Matt lying on the floor. Was he still breathing? How bad had that blow to the head been?
She could still hear the dull sound of the crack, and it terrified her. Was he dying? Was he dead?

She felt something vibrating and knew her limbs were shaking. It was some sort of reaction, maybe shock.

He shoved her forward and she sprawled against the altar, half on top of it. Boneless, she slid down its smooth marble sides,
slipping to her knees. She felt his hands ripping at her blouse, tearing it partway off her, and she cried out for help from
God or the Goddess or whoever was watching over this place. This was the traditional place of sanctuary, the place where harm
was not permitted to come to anyone who claimed the protection of God and the church. To raise your hand against someone who
had sought sanctuary here was to raise your hand against God.

He pulled her up and flipped her over. Annie felt the flat cold, marble altar under the bare skin on her back where he
had ripped her blouse. She looked into his face and saw that his expression was rapt and excited. On some level, she doubted
that he even knew what was happening.

Jehovah’s Pitchfork,
she thought suddenly. That’s who and what he was. The Devil usurping the House of the Lord.

She made one last-ditch try. “This is sacrilege,” she said, deliberately pitching her voice low. “I have cried out for sanctuary.
If you don’t release me, the Lord will strike you down.”

Fletcher laughed at her. “You don’t think I actually believe that crap, do you?”